RantWorld

False Reports about Oprah's Trillion Dollar Lawsuit

Here's another cautionary tale about journalism in the internet age. I've recently seen a rash of blog posts and online news factoids like this one about a $1.2 trillion dollar lawsuit filed against Oprah Winfrey by a poet named Damon Lloyd Goffe.

This lawsuit is preposterous on many levels, so it's an irresistible story for bloggers and news outlets that  need a quick, sensational post. The problem is, the posts are all wrong.

According to most accounts, the lawsuit was filed on July 31st, 2009. But in fact that is the date the frivolous lawsuit was thrown out of court, not the date it was filed.

If you poke around long enough you can find one responsible blogger who wrote about this a few days earlier: Michael Doyle, a legal affairs reporter for McClatchy's Washington Bureau.

On August 3rd, Doyle posted in his blog "Suits & Sentences" that Goffe's suit was dismissed on Friday, July 31st. Doyle also remarks that Goffe also filed another suit against NBC last month claiming:

"My life is been recorded and broadcasted since 2003 via satellite/cable network Bravo/Bravo 2, whose parent company is NBC/Universal, as well as the internet under the title 'the will smith show' and previously 'real world.'"

You can't make this stuff up.

So how did the false version of this story get such traction in the celebrity blogosphere? Three of the blogs that I saw pointed to aggregator sites, which in turn pointed to that traditional fount of disinformation, The National Enquirer.

The Enquirer's deliberately undated article, posted after July 31st, claimed the suit was filed on July 31st, rather than dismissed on that date. Other articles like this one point back to the World Entertainment News Network, an entertainment wire service. It's hard to say who got the story from whom, but it's easy to see why those "original" sources would suppress the truth of the matter.

Perhaps Enquirer editors knew the story would get more mileage if it "forgot" to mention that the crackpot lawsuit was already thrown out of court? That kind of story won't go viral. Much better (for their website traffic anyway) to pretend that Oprah faces a real threat, fact-checking be damned.

Studios Try to Rewrite Rules in Hollywood

I've been trying my hand at screenwriting, so of course I've been following the development of the WGA writers' strike with interest.

A few minutes ago I saw a headline on the Yahoo! Finance site titled, "Strike rewrites rules in Hollywood." The article itself was interesting, but the overall web page was even more telling. Click on the image to see a screenshot if you like.

There is a theory that the studios helped engineer this strike because it will let them shake up the industry, send U.S. jobs overseas, and basically break the backs of the unions. This Reuters news story sure bears out the part about sending U.S.  jobs overseas.

One of the main sticking points in the negotiations is that the studios don't want to pay any residuals -- meaning zero, zip, nada -- when films or TV shows or 'webisodes' are broadcast over the internet. Even if people pay to view those shows, or the shows make money from advertising, the studios don't want to pay the writers.

The studios claim that no one can predict whether internet broadcasting will make any money -- even though it already does -- so naturally they can't pay out even the three-tenths of one percent residual fee that writers get from DVD sales today.

Of course we all know that the future of broadcasting runs straight through the internet.

There next to the article about the strike changing all the rules is a Sony ad about watching video from the Yahoo! Video site on your TV. "Watch web video like never before" says the headline.

So no one knows if this internet video things will ever take off, but Sony's already selling product?

Right below that ad on the page is the MY TV pod that's supposed to show me all the great shows I can watch during prime time tonight. It says simply 'No results found."

Hmm, maybe that's because there aren't any writers? (Yes I probably never set some preferences in my Yahoo account, but still it seems like poetic justice).

Finally. there is a bit of hope. One of the most popular videos on the Yahoo! Video site right now is the "Why We Fight" video posted by wgaamerica. If you want to learn more about what the writers are striking for, watch this video now.

Diebold Changes Name to Dodge Bad P.R.

Diebold recently spun off its voting machine company and renamed it to Premier Election Solutions. That's a pretty transparent attempt to leave behind the bad associations the public has with the name Diebold. At least this is a more accepted business practice than removing critcism from your own Wikipedia entry, which Diebold also did.

It seems the parent corporation couldn't sell off the troubled election division, so they spun it off instead.

The press release says, "Premier inherits a very strong reputation for service that is unmatched in the election system industry." As we can see from the recent decertification of all electronic Diebold, uh, Premier voting machines in California, that strong reputation must be bad strong, not good strong. And clearly they are not unmatched: the other voting machine vendors all failed the California tests too.

In fact the California action might have played a role in this decision, though a Diebold spokesperson played that role down in a recent PCWorld article:

The moves in California played a small part in the decision to restructure the business unit and lower revenue expectations, Jacobsen said. "This is a cumulative effect," he added. "There's a lot of activity in a lot of states."

Or maybe the thrill was just gone for Diebold after losing ex-CEO Wally O'Dell. Without him how can they possibly deliver those Ohio votes for Bush again in 2008?

Bowen's Study Finds Big Flaws in Voting Machines

I took some heat last year when I supported a third-party candidate for California Secretary of State. I still think it's necessary to support strong third-party candidacies. However Debra Bowen, the Democrat who won the election, has been making some headlines recently, and they have been (mostly) good ones.

In July a study commissioned by Bowen found that, not too surprisingly, electronic voting machines can be hacked!

On August 3rd, informed by the results of that study, Bowen announced that she would decertify all the existing electronic voting machines in the state, and then recertify them under new rules.

7-Up Natural

At first I planned to rant about the way that Cadbury-Schweppes has tried to turn the benzene in soda controversy to their favor by releasing 7-Up Natural. (I wrote more about Benzene and Soda yesterday). Yet removing the offending chemicals from your formula is a very appropriate reponse. It obviously has marketing benefits for the company, and it removes another source of benzene from the supermarket shelves.

Cadbury-Schweppes removed (most) of the artificial ingredients from 7-Up, including sodium benzoate. So now they have no additional lawsuit potential from cancer-stricken customers who might one day try to sue.

There is some controversy about the claim that 7-Up is now "100% Natural" since they still use high-fructose corn syrup as a major ingredient.

Whether they took this step primarily to remove the benzene or primarily as a marketing ploy, the net effect is still quite positive. Let's hope the rest of the soft drink makers follow suit.

Forrest Hill for California Secretary of State

The electoral process is severly broken in the United States at the national, state, and county levels. I've talked a lot about voting machine problems.

The other big problem, in my opinion, is that third party voices are actively prevented from speaking in the same forums as their major party counterparts.

Ever since the success of Ross Perot in the 1992 Presidential Election, the two ruling parties have done everything in their power to prevent third party candidates from getting on state ballots and from participating in televised debates.

In most states, the Secretary of State determines how elections are governed and implemented. Few people paid much attention to the Secretary of State position until two then-unknown politicians, Kathleen Harris of Florida in 2000 and Ken Blackwell of Ohio in 2004, abused their positions to influence election results in favor of their own Republican party candidates.

Now it is clear that an unscrupulous Secretary of State can  subvert the elections process and deny many legitimate citizens the right to vote. A strong and impartial Secretary, on the other hand, could go a long way toward making a state's elections far more democratic.

The best candidate for Secreatary of State would be neither a Democrat nor a Republican. A candidate from a third party has much more motivation to make elections fair, to make every vote count, and to let every qualified candidate have a voice.

Forrest Hill is a Green Party candidate for Secretary of State in California in 2006. He is committed to voting reform, as evidenced by this quote from his blog:

The accuracy of our elections will take a giant step backwards if either Bruce McPherson (R) or Debra Bowen (D) are elected Secretary of State. While the two candidates differ on various technical issues surrounding the certification of voting machines, both continue to support an open market for our votes controlled by private voting machine manufactures.

Since there are 58 counties in California, the potential number of voting systems in our state is large. No matter what safeguards Bowen or McPherson dream up, putting the integrity of our votes into the hands of a 'network' of private corporations is really a recipe for disaster.

If we are serious about assuring the accuracy of our vote we need a Secretary of State that will work with the local county registrars to create a 'single uniform system of voting' throughout the state, administered by a non-partisan elections commission.

As expected Forrest Hill has been locked out from debates with the Republican and Democratic candidates.

The deck is usually stacked against third party candidates. These days, the deck is even stacked against fair voting.  The only cure for that kind of deck-stacking is to elect a third party candidate for Secretary of State.

Whatever your party affiliation, if you are a California voter I urge you to vote for Forrest Hill for Secretary of State on November 7th.

Benzene and Soda

Taking a break from this blog's voting theme, I wanted to raise awareness of a big sleeper of a health issue.

A carcinogenic compound known as benzene can form in drinks that contain ascorbic acid and either sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate.

Guess what: a lot of soft drinks contain both of those ingredients.

Benzene is one of the most carcinogenic compounds around. If benzene levels in public drinking water exceed 5 parts per billion (ppb) the press must be notified and public warnings must be broadcast.

Most soft drinks have levels below 5 ppb, but a few of them test much higher than that. And when they do test higher, their consumers don't get notified at all.

The FDA and various soft drink companies have known about this for about 16 years. The FDA chose to let the drink manufacturers police themselves. A few manufacturers reformulated their drinks to prevent benzene from forming, but most of them did little or nothing.

As a recent Canadian study showed, testing by the drink manufacturers in controlled factory conditions seems to produce much different results than testing on randomly selected drinks from store shelves.

It seems that the amount of benzene formed depends a lot on whether that batch of soda was affected by heat or light during transportation or storage. So even though they say that standard Coca Cola has less than 2 ppm of benzene in it, if you take a plastic liter bottle of Coke and put it in the sun for a while, all bets are off.

So basically, the only safe bet is to "avoid or limit the consumption of products that contain both ascorbic acid and sodium/potassium benzoate."

A recent FDA report said that there's "not enough data" to understand whether benzene in soda is really a threat. Of course that lets them and the food corporations delay taking any action for a while longer.

Nice of the FDA to sit on this for so long, giving us 16 extra years of drinking refreshing benzene, eh?

For more information about the perils of benzene in your soda, the Accidental Hedonist blog did a great article on the topic earlier this year.

That article cited an editorial by Dr. Ruth Kava of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) that claims that fears of benzene in soft drinks are overblown. However a quick look at the other articles on the ACSH site reveal Dr. Kava's unspoken agenda. Other headlines on the site today included "DDT Use is Long Overdue" and "Threat of Low-Level Radiation Often Exaggerated." Every article brands some health concern as overblown, or some environmental progam as a waste of taxpayers' money. Dr. Kava and her organization seem to be trying to sow confusion and to prevent a consensus from forming on this issue.

The plain fact is, if benzene is bad for us, and if it doesn't need to be in our food and drink, it should be removed. Now.

Where's the Outrage about Vote Suppression?

In the past couple months we've seen some powerful retrospective articles about the vote suppression techniques used in the 2004 U. S. elections.

Greg Palast describes how 3.6 million votes were cast and never counted in 2004, more than enough votes to change the outcome in many races. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. shows how an intentional, orchestrated Republican effort in Ohio prevented more that 350,000 predominantly Democratic votes from being cast or counted.

Since the evidence is mounting and the 2006 midterm election looms, I decided to dust off the RantWorld soapbox to try to spread more information about this crucial issue.

We the American people are surrendering our rights of self-government. It's appalling how easy we are making it for the folks who want to manipulate the voting process.

Where is the outrage? Why are none of our elected officials stepping up as champions for fair elections?

The tepid responses to this issue take many forms:

• The mass media is practically silent on this issue
• Citizens aren't exactly making their voices heard en masse either
• State elections officials in many cases are not even enforcing their own voting machine standards
• Political efforts to set up new safeguards for fair voting are often ineffectual, and in many cases become twisted into tools that make vote manipulation easier

Most puzzling is why the Democratic Party doesn't mount an effective, coordinated campaign to ensure fairer voting practices in 2006 and 2008. During the past three national elections -- 2000, 2002, and 2004 -- the Republicans have gained great advantages from vote suppression and manipulation, and the Democrats' expense.

Is it any surprise that Katharine Harris, one of the pioneers of race-based voter suppression techniques, is absolutely sure she will win re-election in November, in spite of scandals and pathetic poll results?